The George Polk Awards in Journalism

The George Polk Awards in Journalism, administered by Long Island
University, honors excellence in print and broadcast journalism. The award
was esablished in 1949 and named for CBS correspondent George Polk, who
was killed while covering a Greek civil war.

Graduate School of Journalism at the University of
California-Berkeley, American Public Media and Living on Earth,
“Early Signs: Reports from a Warming Planet.”

Environmental Reporting:

Kenneth R. Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling, Los Angeles
Times.

2005 George Polk Awards

National Reporting:

Dana Priest, The Washington Post, for her disclosure of
secret overseas prisons

Foreign Reporting:

Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway, The Washington Post, for
reporting on sham reconstruction plans in Afghanistan.

Local Reporting:

Adam Clay Thompson, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, for
“Forgotten City,” an expose of the city's public housing
problems.

International Reporting:

José More and Cam Simpson, Chicago Tribune, for
“Pipeline to Peril,” a two-part series on the massacre of
12 Nepalese men in Iraq that revealed a human trafficking business
with links to a subsidiary of Halliburton.

Television Reporting:

Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, ABC News, for reports on the use
of torture by the CIA in secret foreign detention centers.

Justice Reporting:

Jerry Mitchell, The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., for
revealing elements of the murders of three civil rights activists in
1964, which led to the conviction of the mastermind behind the
plot.

Metropolitan Reporting:

The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, which provided non-stop
coverage of Hurricane Katrina despite being forced from its
headquarters, split among several locations throughout Louisiana, and
relying on Web-only reports for several days.

Health Reporting:

David Evans, Michael Smith, and Liz Willen, Bloomberg News, for
revealing problems with the U.S. clinical trial system that took
advantage of poor participants by failing to disclose dangers and
resulting in numerous medical problems for those tested.

Business Reporting:

Barry Meier, The New York Times, for coverage about a heart
implant that was found to be defective.

Political Reporting:

Marcus Stern and Jerry Kammer, Copley News Service, and Dean
Calbreath, The San Diego Union-Tribune, who uncovered the
scandal of Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the
once-powerful Southern California Republican who admitted accepting
$2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors.

Radio Reporting:

JoAnn Mar, independent radio producer, for “Crime Pays: A
Look at Who's Getting Rich from the Prison Boom,” a one-hour
documentary that uncovered the secret profits for those involved in
the growing private prison system.

Commentary:

Frank Rich, The New York Times,

Book Award:

Victor S. Navasky, former editor and publisher of The
Nation, for his memoir, A Matter of Opinion.